Thanks to everyone who congratulated me for finishing the doctorate, I appreciate all the kind words. A few people have asked me about the thesis and even expressed interest in having a look. Well, you might regret it, but here you go - there is a pdf version available on my web page here (1Mb pdf).

The thesis, entitled The Necessity of Metaphysics (I hate the complicated titles that some people give their doctoral dissertations, I think this one is a lot more catchy! ), is a defense of realist metaphysics in Aristotle's spirit. I won't bore you with the details, but basically my case is that we need metaphysical (read: philosophical) inquiry in all of our rational inquiries, including empirical sciences. I use many examples from physics to prove my point, but there is also quite a lot of technical, "philosophical" stuff in the background. I give you the structure of the argument, which is unlikely to be of any interest to those who don't have a philosophical training:

1. All rational inquiry requires a delimitation of what is possible.
2. The modal space is exhausted by metaphysical modality.
3. Metaphysical modality is grounded in essences.
4. Our epistemic access to metaphysical modality is via a priori reasoning.
5. All rational inquiry requires knowledge about essences. (From 1, 2, 3 & 4)
6. A priori reasoning is fundamentally concerned with essences. (From 3 & 4.)
7. All rational inquiry requires a priori reasoning. (From 5 & 6.)

I'm in fact going to give a paper at my department about the main argument of the thesis tomorrow. But I promise that this is the last you'll hear about it!


I'll be leaving for a whisky distillery trip in Scotland in a week's time, will be visiting Islay and Jura and at least Laphroaig and Bowmore distilleries. Expect some peaty photos! Later on, in the second week of June, I will be going hill walking to Scotland for a week, in the area of Glen Shiel. Pretty much right after that I'm heading to Barcelona to give a paper at a conference. I was there for a conference last summer as well, but managed to forget my camera! So I'll be very keen indeed to take photos this time...


At some point it becomes impossible for all of us to thank for all favs and reply to every single comment. That has happened to me as well, and although I am ever so grateful for all the support, please do not be offended if I fail to paste a thank you note. Rest assured that I will always visit the gallery of whoever faves my shots, and possibly or comment on some of the person's work, provided I find something I really like. This also means that I don't expect anyone to thank me for favs either, it is more than enough if you take the trouble to visit my gallery!

I've always liked photography, but before I bought my precious 400D in June 2007 I couldn't have called myself even an amateur photographer. I've learned a lot since, but I'm still far from being able to take full advantage of my equipment. Hopefully the day will come when I can - the support and advice from this community have certainly helped me approach that target.

In my "civil" life, I'm a philosopher. I'm based at Durham University, where I have just completed my Ph.D. Philosophy is and will always be my first love and my profession, but photography, hill walking (or the outdoors in general), literature, music, films and food&drink are also very important for me. A couple of other random facts about me: I'm originally from Finland and have lived most of my life in Helsinki. I moved to England to do my Ph.D. in October 2005. Presumably I will stay, I like many things British. I'm also a vegetarian, have been for some eight years. I'd be more than glad to hear from anyone who shares my interests, especially if you're local!

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